The most popular article I’ve ever written was about my having babies. 30 And Not Pregnant: How My Biological Clock Is Freaking Me Out (title not mine) was published on Elite Daily in 2015. In it, I wrote about how I’m the last of my family and how I had realized that in order to continue to have a family that would know my parents, I would have to reproduce. The article garnered hundreds of thousands of views and some 25,000 shares, not that I was counting (obsessively, every day). I got paid $0 for baring my soul. Hooray exposure.
Five years later, staring down my 35th birthday, I made an appointment at a fertility clinic that I chose via Google. I met with a nice doctor who talked me through the process: first, we’d run a bunch of tests. Then, we’d try intrauterine insemination (IUI) aka sophisticated turkey baster, which has a small (10-20%) chance of working. Then, if necessary, we’d try IVF — a two-step, three month process with lots of needles. I was hoping we wouldn’t get to that point.
But before anything else, I had to do the tests, starting with a transvaginal ultrasound in the office to check out my ovaries. You will get extremely used to these.
The explainer:
Here are the other tests I did:
HSG
This is the most invasive test. It’s done between day 5 and 10 of your period. They basically shoot dye into your uterus and then take an x-ray to make sure that everything is shaped correctly and your Fallopian tubes aren’t blocked. There is a small risk of puncturing your uterus during this process, which is not what you want to hear when you’re about to try to put a baby in there. You also have to take preventative antibiotics to make sure you don’t get an infection which, again, is a scary thing to hear, but not as bad as the puncturing part.
The HSG does not feel pleasant, but just when I started to think, “Wait, this really sucks,” they finished. Also, just FYI the dye that goes in has to come out somehow — so prepared to feel very sticky all day.
Fun fact: The closest place available for me to do this test was a children’s hospital, so I had to get my uterus imaged at a place where I was the oldest patient by 25 years, in a room with dinosaurs on the wall and shit. The staff were very nice and said it was the third one they’d done that day.
The rest of the tests are blood draws. After my last blood draw, I was trying to be coy with the lab tech and said, “Whew, glad those are done with!” without mentioning why I was doing all these tests. The tech was like, “Honey, if you’re trying to get pregnant, you’re going to get real used to getting your blood drawn.” (She was very right.)
Ovarian Assessment
This has to be done on day 2 or 3 of your cycle. Mine was called Reprosource. Your ovaries basically get a grade on a scale of 1-20. To write this, I actually looked at my report to see what that means — it’s apparently the chances that you’ll be able to retrieve five or more eggs with stimulation if you do IVF (more on this later). Mine got a score of 14 which is fine for my age — at the time I just assumed my ovaries got a B, which is respectable.
Genetic Testing
This is an easy one because it can be done anytime. After you get your results, you’re supposed to remember that you’re a carrier for medium chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency when you choose a sperm donor, assuming they have also been tested for that. So, it’s of mixed usefulness.
Infectious Disease Testing
This has to be done before doing an IUI and updated every so often. It’s to make sure you don’t have a disease that could be passed to your newborn.
They also screen for CMV (cytomegalovirus). If you are negative, you can only use negative donors, or you risk birth defects (most commonly hearing loss). If you are positive, you can use any donor. Fun fact: I apparently had an active CMV infection at the time of my test which is super rare! So I had to wait for that to clear, which could take a few months, before I could get started.
IgG/M Testing
These test the antibodies present in your blood — possibly to test for toxoplasmosis? At this point I was pretty much handing out vials of my blood without asking questions.
Counseling
While not a medical test per se, my clinic required that I speak to a counselor about using a sperm donor (this is optional at some clinics). My conversation with her was less, “Are you sane enough to be a mother?” and more, “Let’s think through different scenarios that could come up for you.”
The counselor asked me questions like what would I tell my child about using a sperm donor, did I want to have an anonymous or known donor and what would the implications of that be for my child, how would having this child affect my future family plans, etc. She also disclosed that she had conceived with IUI so I was super psyched to talk to her about her experience. The session was twice as expensive as my regular therapist, but it was helpful and encouraging.
My experience:
Despite all of these tests being laid out on a very handy sheet by my doctor, I lost some time at the testing stage by not doing the right tests at the right point in my cycle, and having to wait another month to repeat them at the right point in my cycle. The process is a lot to juggle but this is just the intro to being on top of your shit so you will get better at it. (If there’s one thing I can say about trying to get pregnant, it made me a lot better at managing what’s going on — asking the right questions, having clear steps, etc.)
So that was the first round of tests. I passed everything. Hooray. But, by the time I found that out, I had started dating someone and was holding out hope for, you know, love from more than one person to be involved in creating a child.
One year and a tearful breakup later, I was back at the clinic. Great news — I didn’t have to repeat any of my tests (not even infectious disease testing, which actually seems a little sketch in retrospect).
This time I actually ordered sperm and was ready to go. How did I choose a sperm donor, you ask?
Part Two: Choosing a Sperm Donor
Part Three: The IUIs
Part Four: Getting Started with IVF and Finding a Clinic
Part Five: Insurance Hell and IVF Costs
Part Six: Egg Retrieval and Needles Galore
Part Seven: Creating Embryos and the Numbers Game
Part Eight: ~*fEEliNgS*~